The New York state Power Lines Project

The following section on the New York state power lines project is part of Chapter 8, Man Made Electromagnetic Radiation Fields, of the book "Cross Currents: the Perils of Electrical Pollution" by Robert O. Becker.

The New York state Power-Lines Project

When the New York ‘State Department of Health Power-Lines Project finally got started, it was, to all intents, under the control of the utilities that were providing the funding.  (In present day  “research,” this is known as the golden rule-he who has the gold makes the rules.) When I testified at the public hearings, I suggested that the one study that should have top priority was a long-term, large scale epidemiological study of the New York State population group living within 200 feet of existing high-voltage transmission lines.  However, rather than doing that study, the Department of Health decided to have Dr. David Savitz of the University of North Carolina repeat the Wertheimer study in the Denver area. The resources available to Savitz were enormously greater than those that Wertheimer had had, and I believe that this replication of her study was undertaken with the expectation of disproving her results.

After five years and the expenditure of almost a half million dollars, Savitz obtained the same results as Wertheimer.  He reported that 20 percent of childhood cancers appeared to be produced by exposure to a 3-miligauss power-frequency magnetic fields.  The results of the New York State Power-Lines Project were released in 1987.  They contained this bombshell, as well as other evidence that power -frequency fields had significant behavioral and central -nervous system effects, as well as a stimulating effect on cancer-cell growth.

While the final report of the advisory panel to the New York State study was a masterpiece of understatement, the evidence is clear.  Exposure to power lines and to other 60-cycle radiation from appliances at levels commonly found in the environment produces an increase in the rate at which human cancer cells grow; an increase in the incidence of childhood cancers; alterations in behavior that are long-lasting, if not permanent; and significant changes in the production o certain vitally important brain chemicals called neuro-hormones.

The recommendation of the navy’s SANGUINE study committee, made in 1973, more than a decade earlier, had finally been validated.

The immediate problem following the release of this report was the need for the Public Service Commission, which had commissioned the study, to act upon the findings of definite health hazards.  The 3-milligauss field level was a real embarrassment.  The magnetic-field level at the edge of the right-of-way, about fifty feet away from the standard 345k-V transmission line, averages 100 milligauss.  These lines constitute the bulk of the transmission facilities in the U.S.  If the 3-milligauss safety standard were applied, the right-of-way around almost all transmission lines would have to be considerably enlarged  In addition, many of the distribution lines generate similar strength fields in adjacent residences, and their power would have to be significantly reduced.

The PSC set a “safe” level of 100 milligauss, claiming that the public had accepted this level of risk.  This was nonsense.  The public had been unaware of any risk before these studies became common knowledge, and even after that that the public was told that while some risks might be present, further research was necessary.  The public was never asked if it accepted any such risk.